Subject
Birthdates and calendars
From
Date
Body
Dear List,
Trying to puzzle out the mysteries of different calendars and moveable feasts, and an approaching important birthday, I encountered a reference to "solar day" (average:24hours) and "sidereal day" (23h56min).
Shade's lines [ the little scissors I am / holding are/ A dazzling synthesis of / sun and star] came to my mind because I had never been satisfied by its peculiar distinction bt. "sun" and "star".
Would Shade, or VN, be indicating any special reference for the establishment of hours, dates...time?
For example, when the movements of Gradus are almost synchronized with Shade's process of setting down "Pale Fire": On July 5th, at noontime, in the other hemisphere...Gradus... walked towards a Russian commercial plane bound for Copenhagen, and this event synchronized with Shade's starting in the early morning (Atlantic seaboard time) to compose, or to set down after composing in bed, the opening lines of Canto Two. When almost twenty-four hours later he got to line 230, Gradus, after a refreshing night at the summer house of our consul in Copenhagen, an important Shadow, had entered, with the Shadow, a clothes store in order to conform to his description in later notes (to lines 286 and 408).
There are various other instances. The position of the sun is detailed once according to its daily and seasonal variations ( i.e; these might refer to the "solar day" measurements): But perhaps the funniest note concerned the manipulations of the window curtains which had to be drawn in different ways at different hours to prevent the sun from getting at the upholstery. A description of the position of the sun, daily and seasonal, was given for the several windows... A footnote, however, generously suggested that instead of manning the curtains, I might prefer to shift and reshift out of sun range the more precious pieces of furniture.
We also find eavesdropping Kinbote, now coursing through Shade's nocturnal lighted windows: "all the windows were dark for a couple of hours; but then, at about 3 a.m., I saw from my upstairs bathroom that the poet had gone back to his desk in the lilac light of his den, and this nocturnal session brought the canto to line 230 (card 18). On another trip to the bathroom an hour and a half later, at sunrise, I found the light transferred to the bedroom, and smiled indulgently, for, according to my deductions, only two nights had passed since the three-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-ninth time - but no matter."
There is a (hallucinatory) correspondence between Kinbote's telling about Zembla and Shade's poem, when Kinbote sees himself as a moon circling around the sun ( lunar calendar?): ".the sunset glow of the story acted as a catalytic agent upon the very process of the sustained creative effervescence that enabled Shade to produce a 1000-line poem in three weeks. There is, moreover, a symptomatic family resemblance in the coloration of both poem and story. I have reread, not without pleasure, my comments to his lines, and in many cases have caught myself borrowing a kind of opalescent light from my poet's fiery orb"
Sunsets are important markers for Kinbote, there are other "sunset glows":
(a) Where were the battlements of my sunset castle? Where was Zembla the Fair?
(b) note to line 61: The setting sun that lights the tips/ Of TV's giant paperclips/Upon the roof;/ The shadow of the doorknob that/
At sundown is a baseball bat/Upon the door;/ ( Shade? Kinbote?)
(c) The passage 797 (second part of line)-809, on the poet's sixty-fifth card, was composed between the sunset of July 18 and the dawn of July 19. That morning I had prayed in two different churches (on either side, as it were, of my Zemblan denomination, not represented in New Wye) and had strolled home in an elevated state of mind.
or indicators:
(a) The fleeting and faint but thousands of times repeated action of the same sun that was accused of sending messages from the tower...
But also for Shade:
(a) My picture book was at an early age/ The painted parchment / papering our cage:/ Mauve rings around the /moon; blood-orange sun;/
Twinned Iris; and that/ rare phenomenon/ The iridule ...
( doesn't the rare iridule appear only during sunset?)
(b) The abstract battle is concretely fought./ The pen stops in mid-air, / then swoops to bar/
A canceled sunset* or / restore a star,/ And thus it physically / guides the phrase / Toward faint daylight /through the inky maze**.
(c) But it's not bedtime yet. / The sun attains/ Old Dr. Sutton's last two / windowpanes.
.........................................................................................
*a palette with the dregs of many sunsets; (C.Kinbote)
** against the pale ink of the zenith (nightfall;afterglow????) (C.Kinbote)
[btw: how come a mention to "zenith" at nightfall? Could anyone explain this apparent incongruence?]
Since I'm unable to solve any mystery that demands a minimum of math or physics, I hope the quotations above might stimulate further ideas, invite corrections or offer illustrations concerning the possibility that VN might be teasing the readers by shifting to different calenders, time measurements, etc.
There is one more doubt that suddenly popped up and, perhaps, it has already been explained in our List, but I couldn't find a clear answer to it:
When Shade writes down "it's not bedtime yet..." ( & also when he is, apparently, writing his poem just before crossing over to CK's house and getting killed) these lines suggest that Shade has been composing during daylight. And yet Kinbote is very emphatic about the poem's progress from sunset into dawn, or the difference bt. "composing at night" and "setting the poem down on paper in the morning."
Has K's consistence about that matter been elaborated upon?
Has anyone bothered to plot, like Kinbote at certain times, the "astronomical" course of Shade's composing, drafting, correcting and writing of "Pale Fire"?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Trying to puzzle out the mysteries of different calendars and moveable feasts, and an approaching important birthday, I encountered a reference to "solar day" (average:24hours) and "sidereal day" (23h56min).
Shade's lines [ the little scissors I am / holding are/ A dazzling synthesis of / sun and star] came to my mind because I had never been satisfied by its peculiar distinction bt. "sun" and "star".
Would Shade, or VN, be indicating any special reference for the establishment of hours, dates...time?
For example, when the movements of Gradus are almost synchronized with Shade's process of setting down "Pale Fire": On July 5th, at noontime, in the other hemisphere...Gradus... walked towards a Russian commercial plane bound for Copenhagen, and this event synchronized with Shade's starting in the early morning (Atlantic seaboard time) to compose, or to set down after composing in bed, the opening lines of Canto Two. When almost twenty-four hours later he got to line 230, Gradus, after a refreshing night at the summer house of our consul in Copenhagen, an important Shadow, had entered, with the Shadow, a clothes store in order to conform to his description in later notes (to lines 286 and 408).
There are various other instances. The position of the sun is detailed once according to its daily and seasonal variations ( i.e; these might refer to the "solar day" measurements): But perhaps the funniest note concerned the manipulations of the window curtains which had to be drawn in different ways at different hours to prevent the sun from getting at the upholstery. A description of the position of the sun, daily and seasonal, was given for the several windows... A footnote, however, generously suggested that instead of manning the curtains, I might prefer to shift and reshift out of sun range the more precious pieces of furniture.
We also find eavesdropping Kinbote, now coursing through Shade's nocturnal lighted windows: "all the windows were dark for a couple of hours; but then, at about 3 a.m., I saw from my upstairs bathroom that the poet had gone back to his desk in the lilac light of his den, and this nocturnal session brought the canto to line 230 (card 18). On another trip to the bathroom an hour and a half later, at sunrise, I found the light transferred to the bedroom, and smiled indulgently, for, according to my deductions, only two nights had passed since the three-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-ninth time - but no matter."
There is a (hallucinatory) correspondence between Kinbote's telling about Zembla and Shade's poem, when Kinbote sees himself as a moon circling around the sun ( lunar calendar?): ".the sunset glow of the story acted as a catalytic agent upon the very process of the sustained creative effervescence that enabled Shade to produce a 1000-line poem in three weeks. There is, moreover, a symptomatic family resemblance in the coloration of both poem and story. I have reread, not without pleasure, my comments to his lines, and in many cases have caught myself borrowing a kind of opalescent light from my poet's fiery orb"
Sunsets are important markers for Kinbote, there are other "sunset glows":
(a) Where were the battlements of my sunset castle? Where was Zembla the Fair?
(b) note to line 61: The setting sun that lights the tips/ Of TV's giant paperclips/Upon the roof;/ The shadow of the doorknob that/
At sundown is a baseball bat/Upon the door;/ ( Shade? Kinbote?)
(c) The passage 797 (second part of line)-809, on the poet's sixty-fifth card, was composed between the sunset of July 18 and the dawn of July 19. That morning I had prayed in two different churches (on either side, as it were, of my Zemblan denomination, not represented in New Wye) and had strolled home in an elevated state of mind.
or indicators:
(a) The fleeting and faint but thousands of times repeated action of the same sun that was accused of sending messages from the tower...
But also for Shade:
(a) My picture book was at an early age/ The painted parchment / papering our cage:/ Mauve rings around the /moon; blood-orange sun;/
Twinned Iris; and that/ rare phenomenon/ The iridule ...
( doesn't the rare iridule appear only during sunset?)
(b) The abstract battle is concretely fought./ The pen stops in mid-air, / then swoops to bar/
A canceled sunset* or / restore a star,/ And thus it physically / guides the phrase / Toward faint daylight /through the inky maze**.
(c) But it's not bedtime yet. / The sun attains/ Old Dr. Sutton's last two / windowpanes.
.........................................................................................
*a palette with the dregs of many sunsets; (C.Kinbote)
** against the pale ink of the zenith (nightfall;afterglow????) (C.Kinbote)
[btw: how come a mention to "zenith" at nightfall? Could anyone explain this apparent incongruence?]
Since I'm unable to solve any mystery that demands a minimum of math or physics, I hope the quotations above might stimulate further ideas, invite corrections or offer illustrations concerning the possibility that VN might be teasing the readers by shifting to different calenders, time measurements, etc.
There is one more doubt that suddenly popped up and, perhaps, it has already been explained in our List, but I couldn't find a clear answer to it:
When Shade writes down "it's not bedtime yet..." ( & also when he is, apparently, writing his poem just before crossing over to CK's house and getting killed) these lines suggest that Shade has been composing during daylight. And yet Kinbote is very emphatic about the poem's progress from sunset into dawn, or the difference bt. "composing at night" and "setting the poem down on paper in the morning."
Has K's consistence about that matter been elaborated upon?
Has anyone bothered to plot, like Kinbote at certain times, the "astronomical" course of Shade's composing, drafting, correcting and writing of "Pale Fire"?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm